In the past, Brazilian intellectuals have coined the term “metaphor of war” to account for the representations of the crime and violence in Rio de Janeiro. The logic of war is at the very core of Rio’s pacification of the favelas, which in practice is carried out through armed confrontations between the police and armed groups within pacified favelas, where the main objective (on both sides), in spite of the rhetoric of peace, is still to kill the enemy.

During the recent revolution in Egypt, Simon Bolívar- a man from a different war, a different century and a different continent- was watched over and embraced by protestors as a symbol for their struggle. Why?